Lacey Helen Blog's: Can a Buyer Extract Delicious Value From This $11.9M Olive Farm in Florida?

Thursday, 26 March 2020

Can a Buyer Extract Delicious Value From This $11.9M Olive Farm in Florida?

Usually rows of olive trees make folks think of far-flung locals like Greece, Italy, or Spain. But what about Ocala, FL?

Clear Creek Farm on West Highway 326, with its rows and rows of mature olive trees and much more, is listed for sale for $11.9 million.

“It’s got a 25-acre olive orchard with an olive oil–producing facility,” says listing agent John Pinel of Premier Sotheby’s International Realty in Winter Park, FL. He’s co-listing the property with Maury L. Carter & Associates. “It’s got brand-spanking new equipment in there, it’s got less than five hours on the equipment, so it’s ready to go—but nobody’s operating it right now.”

For a buyer in search of an entrepreneurial opportunity, this delicious opportunity to extract prized oil may prove tantalizing indeed.

Clear Creek Farm is also set up for cattle and horses.

It includes a horse barn with 17 stalls, two hay barns, a feed barn, and a cattle lab. During the property’s heyday, the owners also ran a cattle business.

“Most of the stuff they did on the property was higher-end,” Pinel explains. “The cattle that they raised there were wagyu cattle, which they would sell to restaurants.”

The property totals 366 acres and has an office building, workshop, as well as two residences.

“It’s got a 1,500-square-foot caretaker’s house,” Pinel says. The farm has a three-person, on-site staff maintaining the property, which includes 10,000 olive trees.

Built in 1989, the main house measures 8,036 square feet and has eight bedrooms and 9.5 bathrooms. It features an extensive outdoor area with a tennis court, pool, and gazebo.

“It’s definitely a unique house. It’s got three different pods. The main house has the master and a guest wing, family room, kitchen. Then the two other pods are both three stories, and they have more bedrooms,” Pinel says. “I think it was designed so that the family could all get together, and each family could have their own area of the house without being on top of each other.”

The bank foreclosed on the property after the family patriarch passed away. The house will require a bit of work from a buyer, Pinel says.

“The house is not going to sell the property; it’s only one piece of the pie,” Pinel says. “I would imagine that somebody would go in there and fix it up a little bit because they want a nice house while they’re staying on property.”

The biggest landowner in the United States, John Malone, owns property nearby, and the agent says Clear Creek Farm’s new owner might be someone similar.

“These properties up in Ocala are pretty unique properties, these are not properties where someone buys them with the expectations of running businesses like cattle or olive oil or anything else and is going to make a profit,” Pinel explains. “These are more like trophy properties for these ultrarich people that love land that want to say they own a property in Ocala.”